Mailbox Monday – 2/8

Mailbox Monday can be found at: The Printed Page

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

I got a lot of books this week from a variety of places.  I got “The Pillars of the Earth” on loan from a friend who said it is an excellent novel.  I am looking forward to reading it but didn’t realize it is almost 1000 pages long!

I also got a couple books from the Amazon Vine program.  “The Sixty-Eight Rooms” totally reminds me of the book “From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” which I loved as a kid.  So I am excited to read that one.  I also got “The Doom Machine” from Vine and it sounds like a great book too!

“Steamed: A Steampunk Romance” and “Twice As Hot” were two books I bought from bookdepository.com for $3.99 (with free shipping). I loved “Playing with Fire” and “Twice as Hot” is the next book in that series by Gena Showalter.  Showalter has been hit or miss for me since sometimes she gets too romancy but I really loved “Playing with Fire” so I will give the second book a shot. “Steamed” was just too crazy looking to pass up and I always find Katie MacAlister to be good for a fun and silly read.

So that’s what I got this week!  Hope you all have a great week and happy reading!

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

 

First Sentence: “The small boys came early to the hanging.”
From Amazon.com: “A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett‘s historical masterpiece.”

The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone

 
First Sentence: “Getting up in the morning was always a challenge for Ruthie.”
From Amazon.com: “Almost everybody who has grown up in Chicago knows about the Thorne Rooms. Housed in the Children’s Galleries of the Chicago Art Institute, they are a collection of 68 exquisitely crafted miniature rooms made in the 1930s by Mrs. James Ward Thorne. Each of the 68 rooms is designed in the style of a different historic period, and every detail is perfect, from the knobs on the doors to the candles in the candlesticks. Some might even say, the rooms are magic.Imagine—what if you discovered a key that allowed you to shrink so that you were small enough to sneak inside and explore the rooms’ secrets? What if you discovered that others had done so before you? And that someone had left something important behind?”

Steamed: A Steampunk Romance by Katie MacAlister
 
First Sentence: “Good morning, Jack.  Is that a molecular detector in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”
From Amazon.com : “When one of Jack Fletcher’s nanoelectromechanical system experiments is jostled in his lab, the resulting explosion sends him into the world of his favorite novel-a seemingly Victorian-era world of steampower, aether guns, corsets, and goggles. A world where the lovely and intrepid Octavia Pye captains her airship straight into his heart…”

Twice as Hot (Tales of an Extraordinary Girl, Book 2) by Gena Showalter
 
First Sentence: “Okay. Here’s the lowdown.”
From Amazon.com: “Belle Jamison is finally starting to feel like a normal girl again. Her job as a paranormal investigator is going well, she’s learned to control her supernatural abilities (mostly) and she’s just gotten engaged to Rome Masters, the ultra-sexy operative who once tried to neutralize her!
But planning a wedding is never easy, especially when the bride keeps accidentally torching her dress, the groom returns from a dangerous mission with selective memory loss and the man responsible now wants Belle for himself. With Rome’s ex determined to win him back and a new band of supervillains on the horizon, it will take all Belle’s powers—plus a little help from her trusty empath sidekick—to save the day, salvage the wedding and prove that true love really does conquer all.”

The Doom Machine by Mark Teague
 
First Sentence: “The morning of the invasion, Jack Creedle got up early, as usual.”
From Amazon.com: “When a spaceship lands in Vern Hollow, Jack’s hometown, he and his no-account inventor-uncle Bud are busy trying to fix a car driven by Dr. Shumway and her daughter, Isadora. Although Uncle Bud secretly knows the aliens are after one of his inventions, everyone is surprised when the space aliens capture seven of Vern Hollow’s residents and take them into outer space on a wild adventure. . . .
After a series of twists and turns, all of them are taken to Skreepia, the aliens’ planet, where they have to defeat the Skreep queen before she can use Uncle Bud’s invention to take over planet Earth. Filled with wonderful detail, humor, inventive dialog, and irresistible black-and-white spot art, THE DOOM MACHINE is a tour de force by one of America’s most beloved storytellers.”